ABSTRACT
The successful shift from a subsistence economy based wholly on foraging to one based primarily on food production was one of the most significant developments in the existence of the genus Homo. For several million years, human beings had obtained their diet first from scavenging, then from hunting, fishing, and collecting. Within approximately the last 10,000 years, markedly different subsistence economies based on cultivated plants and, in many areas, domesticated animals, have replaced hunting and gathering around the world. When viewed from this perspective, the origin and dispersal of food production took place very rapidly. Within these last ten millennia, however, the process of domestication or adoption of domesticates occurred at varying time-scales based on local environmental, economic, and social conditions.
